Sorry guys I am changing hosts and things are all buggered up to hell in here. Try to ignore me until I get this sorted. I mean, not that that’s HARD. Hey, at least you can see this. (It’s a positive! Maybe?)

It’s so hot here at the moment. And hotter tomorrow, they say. I don’t know who ‘they’ are, but they can fuck right off with their forecasts of 35 degrees plus. I have friends who thrive in the heat, who can lie out in it with expressions of pure contentment. Vampire that I am, I hiss and retreat to the house. Actually it cooled down a bit this afternoon, so we went to the beach.

BEACH?

We met one of Mr T’s coworkers, who has a Saint Bernard. Now I am used to big dogs, but this dog had a head the size of a bucket. I was going to say a pumpkin, but you can get some pretty small pumpkins. Bucket is about right. Maybe a basketball? whatever. It’s too hot.

Big head, little legs

The dogs played together and at one point, the Saint went out deeper (to lie down and wallow in the water, in the manner of a hippopotamus) and the puppy followed him. It got too deep for him, so he started swimming along as though he’d always done it. OK, so another water dog then. We are going to need some more towels.

TOWELS?

In other news, Jane updated her website to WordPress and her husband Paco wrote code to import all her comments. I have read Jane’s blog since Jesus was a cowboy (at least 2003, but you’ll have to check with Jesus) and she amuses me greatly. Anyway, after learning of Paco’s impressive skillz, I (extremely rudely in hindsight) begged for the same service. PANDER TO ME! Surprisingly enough Paco did so, and so all my old comments are now nestled snugly in WordPress. This means nothing to you, I’m sure, but a great deal to me. All hail Paco! Aren’t people nice? I LOVE YOU PACO (in a totally platonic, wordpress-mediated manner). This totally made my February. Thank you Paco and Jane!

YOU ARE NOW ABLE TO COMMENT ON MY BEDRAGGLEDNESS

Aaaaand… you’ll see by that picture that I actually no longer have a puppy. This little dog has somehow turned up in his place. 20kg of little dog, even wringing wet. Doesn’t he look sad? He is not sad, he is KNACKERED. He collapsed the minute we got back from the beach and has been sleeping ever since. Win win!

I don’t know where the puppy is. I mean, there’s no noise or anything, which means he doesn’t have a cat bailed up somewhere; so unless he’s flooding the kitchen or chewing the weatherboards off the side of the house or something, I guess we’re good. Let’s work under that assumption, shall we?

I am a complete angel and have no idea what you might mean.

I have played around with the theme here again so apologies if the feed has gone awry and re-published hundreds of posts. I don’t think it has, but again, I’ll work under the assumption it may have. I finally got the phantasmagoria category in order, which involved creating them all as posts. Because this website was Kickin’ It Old Skool for so long, with its quaint html heritage, there are all sorts of little hanging chads like that.

Oh hai! I didn’t mean to leave the blog hanging on a Post of Doom; but it often happens it seems. Either that or a Post of Drunkenness. (What do you mean you don’t notice those? Are you implying they blend right in with the normal state of affairs? I am HURT.) Anyway, I have been ignoring the blog because I have been getting comment spam, which is very annoying and my current comments system is not coping well. Mainly because I can’t log in as an admin which means I can’t delete spam comments easily. Well, OK, technically that’s a problem with ME and not with the comment system, which really can’t be blamed if I can’t remember my own login, but GOD, you are so PICKY today. Also I can’t lock old posts against getting comments which is where the spam was coming from. So, in effect, I have had to enable Blogger comments; and I am really not too confident on the outcome. Especially since this then required a new template, which I don’t love and am not convinced is working. CAN YOU SEE ME? If so I guess that’s Step One. Success! Let’s break for a beer.

You can’t see me. I am hiding. Incidentally, do you think I can sell my barkcloth curtains on eBay?

… And OK, um, you’re not seeing a new template. I wrote that last night. I uploaded at least two templates in quick succession, only one of which worked, neither of which I liked, and turns out I also don’t like the new Blogger comments. Since I never actually comment on my OWN blog this really shouldn’t matter to me; but turns out it does. So I have put back the original system and template and solemnly swear never to waste four hours on a Thursday night doing this sort of crap again. Especially when I reverse it all in twenty minutes on a Friday. I still can’t disable comments on old posts when I want to but I’ll live with it. FOR NOW. She says threateningly. To no one in particular, it turns out.

Mr. T would like to make a joke here about what’s in his pants, but ignore him. Look at my pretty ottoman! I finally got it recovered and now it’s a Marimekko print. Only took me, um, a year. The scratching post in front of it is a very necessary precaution.

All is going well here; the kittens are pretty much cats and they are idiots. I always suspected as much and now it is true. The Grey Cat loves the toilet – in fact I need to emphasise that he loooOOOOooOOVES the toilet, with a dedicated and all-encompassing love. If you go into the bathroom he will patter in after you on his little white feet within seconds. With me, he sits on my lap and purrs with great satisfaction and vigour; with Mr. T, he stands on his hind legs and puts his feet on the toilet seat and peers between Mr. T’s legs, putting himself in great danger of being weed on. He also enjoys the flushing part of the proceedings, watching in great fascination as the water swirls and stops. I haven’t yet actually found him IN the toilet bowl, but he is so clumsy I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. As for the Ginger Cat, he could take or leave the toilet; however he loooOOOOooOOVES being picked up and held on your shoulder. It must always be your right shoulder though; he contorts himself greatly if you try to hold him on the left. He is also the talker, with a wide array of murps, squeaks, chirps and yowls. Both of them are lovely cats. You can’t have them.

Speaking of the toilet, the cats pull down the towel in the bathroom all the time. I walked in there the other night, turned the light on and saw this. I went to pick up the fallen towel and IT BIT ME. Apparently I had disturbed someone’s Lair. Not a bad lair, as lairs go, I imagine.

(And yes this is our unrenovated bathroom. Although I have replaced all the white & gold plastic hardware with silver, it remains resolutely mint green and the lino is a horror and I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about the shub. I haven’t? Oh, are you in for a TREAT.)

COLLINSVILLE, Illinois – Pranksters in at least three states are messing with electronic road signs meant to warn motorists of possible traffic problems by putting drivers on notice about Nazi zombies and raptors.

1. started your own blog2. slept under the stars
3. played in a band (nobody wants this to happen; my musical ability is poor)4. visited hawaii5. watched a meteor shower
6. given more than you can afford to charity (I have two regular charities but not more than I can AFFORD, no)7. been to disneyland/world8. climbed a mountain(Mount Victoria is totally a mountain… it says so in the name! Even if it is “a mere 87m”… heh.)9. held a praying mantis10. sang a solo (I was twelve and I could sing then. Not so much now.)
11. bungee jumped (I know, right? I don’t even want to and it’s like my national sport)12. visited Paris13. watched a lightning storm at sea14. taught yourself an art from scratch
15. adopted a child16. had food poisoning(oh man, I still can’t eat KFC burgers and that was in 1994)17. walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty18. grown your own vegetables(strawberries and silverbeet on the go right now!)19. seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. slept on an overnight train21. had a pillow fight
22. hitch hiked23. taken a sick day when you’re not ill(I should really get around to this)24. built a snow fort25. held a lamb26. gone skinny dipping
27. run a marathon28. ridden a gondola in Venice29. seen a total eclipse30. watched a sunrise or sunset
31. hit a home run32. been on a cruise33. seen Niagara Falls in person34. visited the birthplace of your ancestors(That would be Scotland and Wales, from what I know)
35. seen an Amish community
36. taught yourself a new language37. had enough money to be truly satisfied(although if offered more, I mean…)
38. seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person39. gone rock climbing 40. seen Michelangelo’s David in person41. sung karaoke42. seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant44. visited Africa45. walked on a beach by moonlight
46. been transported in an ambulance
47. had your portrait painted48. gone deep sea fishing
49. seen the Sistine Chapel in person (what’s with all the Italian references?)
50. been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (and the French ones?)51. gone scuba diving or snorkelling52. kissed in the rain53. played in the mud
54. gone to a drive-in theatre
55. been in a movie56. visited the Great Wall of China
57. started a business
58. taken a martial arts class (haha Mr T is a second-dan black belt and I have no interest at all…)59. visited Russia
60. served at a soup kitchen61. sold girl scout cookies(I scorn your girl scout cookies for Girl Guide biscuits)62. gone whale watching63. gotten flowers for no reason
64. donated blood
65. gone sky diving66. visited a Nazi concentration camp
67. bounced a cheque68. flown in a helicopter69. saved a favourite childhood toy
70. visited the Lincoln memorial71. eaten caviar72. pieced a quilt73. stood in Times Square
74. toured the Everglades
75. been fired from a job76. seen the changing of the guard in London
77. broken a bone78. been on a speeding motorcycle79. seen the Grand Canyon in person 80. published a book
81. visited the Vatican82. bought a brand new car
83. walked in Jerusalem84. had your picture in the newspaper
85. read the entire bible
86. visited the white house87. killed and prepared an animal for eating(Fishy fishy fishy… I am a terrible filleter)88. had chickenpox
89. saved someone’s life
90. sat on a jury91. met someone famous
92. joined a book club93. lost a loved one
94. had a baby
95. seen the alamo in person
96. swum in the great salt lake
97. been involved in a law suit98. owned a cell phone99. been stung by a bee

Actually that was a lot more travel oriented than I expected. Also I had to capitalise half the words… why the hate for capitals, people? Have you noticed this? They don’t bite! They are very calm letters! They just want you to love them!

(the six ties in quite nicely with the blog, don’t you think? Very thoughtful of these meme people.)

1. I pace around when I think. I always have done, according to my parents, who used to find me doing laps of the coffee table while daydreaming. I transferred this to the trampoline when we got one, but I have been sans trampoline for lo these many years. Now I often find myself pacing up and down the hallway, sometimes breaking into a skip-step if I’m thinking of something really interesting.

2. I don’t have underarm hair. Well, I have like four or five hairs under each arm. Weird, I know. Useful, however, as it means I don’t get that big stubbly patch (or indeed, have to shave at all). I think it’s my super-power.

3. I hate the phone. Hate it. When I came back from the USA I forgot about my mobile phone and went three days without it. Completely forgot that such a thing existed. Only the fact that I was sent a work-related text cued me in to the absence. In a related point, I am the world’s slowest texter and much prefer Bluetoothing my phone to the laptop so I can type a full sentence, with correct pronunciation and capitalization, on an actual keyboard. I know this is lame and that nobody cares but me… but I still can’t do it.

4. I have a blank diary that I’m using as a five-year diary, because I think these five years will be full of change and it will be fun to look back and see what I was doing two, three, years ago. Except I can’t make myself change. What? It’s so comfortable here!

6. I will often buy books and DVDs and not read them/watch them, because I’m happy just owning them. Actually, scratch the books. I read all my books. But I must have a dozen movies I’ve never watched. Note to self: watch The Big Lebowski. You are the only person in the world who hasn’t seen it.

In Which: I meet a person off the internet and do not get killed (or even maimed); and also I poison my dog with ham.

OK see I didn’t MEAN to poison the dog with ham. It was Mr. T’s birthday on Sunday and so I made ham and cheese and tomato croissants for brunch. All good, except the sliced ham was a bit old. Two weeks, from memory. Maybe three. However it had been living in the Cold Bin part of the fridge, and actually had a huge chunk of ice on top of it. So I was pretty confident that the ham would be OK. Not confident enough to put it on my OWN croissants, though. I’m not stupid. Just mean. So Mr. T’s croissants were merrily ham-filled and I dumped a great handful of the packet of ham into the dog’s bowl. All was well. Mr. T has a stomach created of iron and antifreeze and an elaborate system of gears, so he suffered no ill effects at all. But the dog, my Brown Dog, who is always cheery and happy and interested, within a few hours was lying listlessly on the rug and wouldn’t even lift his head. I felt bad.

“I poisoned the dog. With ham,” I told Mr. T.
“You have not; you couldn’t have. He digs up bones which have been buried in the back garden for weeks, which are filthy and have gone all green and slimy, and he’s fine,” Mr. T pointed out reasonably.
“But he’s not fine now! He’s saaaaad!” I whined.

Mr. T dismissed my concerns, and thought something else was making the dog listless and unhappy. He remained uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of Sunday, all through Monday and Tuesday morning. When I got home from work on Tuesday night he bounded out the front door with his tail wagging and tongue lolling – he was BACK! I found no mysterious piles of vomit or other bodily functions, so I can only assume his immune system massed forces and overcame the ham by sheer force of will.

Or otherwise he ate the vomit.

Also, I met up with Kate for brunch. (Yes! MASTER of the segue!) Before you become worried for her, rest assured I did not PROVIDE the brunch. I would not poison Kate with ham. Well, I would, probably, but not on purpose. No, we ate at a neutral meeting place where neither of us could either poison the other or, I don’t know, steal each other’s identities or something. (Or DID WE? I must say I, I mean Kate, has great hair. Also everything Jac, I mean I, may have said about Adelaide in the past is completely untrue. No gypsies whatsoever. Or sinkholes. None.)

Anyway, Kate was in Melbourne for a few days at a travelling clown convention. (What? She hasn’t updated her blog yet, so it’s not like she can contradict me.) Between learning how to fit fifty people into a Fiat Bambina, and roping giraffes, we met up to eat brunch and, for someone, I’m not saying who, to spill their food down their top (DAMN YOU, SLIPPERY BUTTON MUSHROOM, YOU FUCKER). And who knew? People from the internet are interesting and fun to spend time with and have excellent conversational skills! Well, not me, obviously. I am awkward and you can’t take me anywhere. Unfortunately I just TURN UP.

Hi! It’s me again. And my laptop woes are over . O-V-E-ahhhhh. Because, of course, I have a new one. The other laptop ended up breaking on me three times. THA-ree. Turns out third time is the charm… or, not the charm; rather, third time is the point where I throw a fit and whine and order a new laptop from Dell. It’s green. It’s extremely green. I’ll post photos when I’m ever home during daylight hours to take any. It has Windows Vista on it, which went well right up until the point where I restarted it and the whole thing hung with just the mouse cursor visible on a black screen. Um, perhaps I shouldn’t have buggered around with the C drive quite so much? The System Restore point took me back to JUST before I installed all the programs I wanted, which means I keep thinking I have something installed only to discover I had System Restored back before it happened. Like time travel, but more aggravating. (Did everyone else know that Firefox has an FTP program as an add-on? I am wildly excited by this. I love you Firefox!) Regardless, Vista is pretty, especially if I overlook the fact it is consuming 53% of my RAM just by sitting there and batting its eyelids.

So the hard drive from the Snapped Laptop is apparently irretrievable. My geeks started talking about kernels or platters or something, which made me think of corn on the cob and I stopped listening. Suffice it to say that if I want those months of photos back, I have to pay someone large amounts of money to go into its guts, and really my photos aren’t that good. Also I’m lazy about getting photos off the memory cards, so I have most of my gaps covered. I am still pissed off about losing the “before” house photos though. It looked so much worse than now! Honest!

Shake-shake-shake, shake-shake-shake, shake your booty (shake your booty)See? I still have these photos from the long weekend in June. Suck it, dead hard drive!

We remain on our busy renovation schedule, currently deeply involved in the “ignore it and just step over it until you stop noticing it” phase. The electrician has removed the extraneous wall light that I claimed was the reason I wasn’t finishing painting the lounge. The new taps and toilet seat are sitting on the floor of the bathroom. The one thing we did get done was installing the heated towel rail, because damp towels when you’re getting out of the shower sucks. Powerful sucks, even.

This is not my dog. This dog completely ignored my dog, waiting only for us to throw sticks or rocks into the water for her to chase. My dog in turn completely ignored this dog and indeed all the sticks and rocks, in favour of swimming aimlessly in circles.

My sister came to Melbourne for a week and bought the whole place out. Sorry, for anyone else who lives here or wants to visit here and had the idea you might like to do some shopping. The whole place is squashed into a suitcase and back in New Zealand. We also went to Wicked, which is the new musical here based on the Wizard of Oz. I really liked it, and even Mr. T didn’t actively hate it. (I made him go). It officially opened in the weekend, yet I saw it two weeks ago, because for some reason those two weeks of performances Didn’t Count. Also I didn’t know that many Australian Idols were in it (Millsy! Anthony Callea! Rob Guest! …wait, something is not right) but I did wonder what all the frantic clapping was. I just thought they had lots of friends in the audience.

Throwing rocks for the dogs. Sometimes AT the dogs; not on purpose, but due to 4-year-old coordination skills. Which are around about the level of mine. I tried to skim stones and just about gave myself a hernia, so don’t look to me for your stone throwing techniques.

All this typing and my hands aren’t clutched into claws! There is something to be said for laptop screen hinges. And that something is: They are useful. Don’t break them.

Laptop troubles continue. In fact, they abound. I will spare you the details, including the bit where I blame my dog … which is truly where I scrape the bottom of the barrel, yet WHO ELSE COULD IT BE? If it wasn’t dogs, it was ghosts. Or dog ghosts. I have an open mind on this issue.

Anyway, it’s quite hard to type with the screen of your laptop flapping in the wind (Internet: hey, weren’t you going to get that fixed? Me: Um, yes, Mr. T DID fix it, multiple times, and it made him very very angry while doing so, and then it broke again within the week) (that wasn’t the dog’s fault though, that one was me) so hence the lack of posts. And the lack of comments, unless you count ones that go “haaaaaaaaa” as that only uses two letters. Any more than that cuts deeply iknto my wrists oh god this is; akilling me. OK I have adjusted my position; only now I can’t see what I’m writing. Really, the internet is not supposed to be this hard.

Anyway, I have a meme from Shan to do, and then there will be a photo. Oh yes, I lost several months worth of photos. Nothing too important, except the ones of the house as it was originally. Now no one will believe the glory that was the shag carpet. Sigh.

Meme!

Rules: You must answer the questions using only one word. Then tag four others.

I am not tagging anyone, as I don’t feel I participate in the internet enough to do so. Feel free to steal, if you’d like it. I laughed till I cried yesterday, I’ve forgotten what about (I cry from laughter easily). And yes, Mr. T is playing sport at 10.30pm at night… it is an indoor AFL game. Usually they play at about 7.30pm so I’m not sure what’s gone wrong. They suck, badly, but only lost by 78 points last week! That’s an improvement!